Leontiev is also a co-owner of two technology companies. One of them is a Skolkovo resident, the alleged main owner of the second - a former official of the Federal Agency for Fishery, accused of fraud in the amount of several hundred million rubles; the business of both is closely related to government orders. Meduza's special correspondents Ivan Golunov and Ilya Zhegulev figured out what kind of company they were and what Leontyev was doing there.
Leontiev and wing aerodynamics
In the spring of 2013, publicist Mikhail Leontyev made a harsh statement. He defended Skolkovo from "raids" by the Investigative Committee of Russia and the Accounts Chamber, which accused the innovation center of inefficiency. In the TV show "However" on Channel One and an article in the magazine of the same name, of which he is the editor-in-chief, Leontyev explained that Skolkovo is the only venture fund in the world that does not "take a project away from a developer."Leontyev is well acquainted with the principles of Skolkovo operation. He is a co-owner of one of the fund's residents, the company "Optimyenga-777", which is engaged in aerodynamic design of wings for aircraft.
It was founded in 2012 by Sergei Peigin, a graduate of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Tomsk State University, and his Israeli partner Boris Epshtein. A year after that, 10% of the enterprise was owned by Mikhail Leontyev, and Optimyenga-777 received about 80 million rubles from Skolkovo as part of a grant for the creation of a software product that can significantly reduce the cost and time of designing an aircraft wing. The company stated that the project was "revolutionary": the wing optimization test problem was solved by their algorithm in 27 hours, and Boeing's programs in 50 days.
| Sergey Peigin
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UAC Meduza confirmed that Optimenga performed a number of works on mathematical modeling of structures, but noted that such works are being ordered from several companies at once.
“I have known these guys [from Optimeng] since childhood, they are very talented, I tried to help them, but unfortunately there is no business there,” Mikhail Leontyev told Meduza. - Nobody ever likes innovators. These are all tears and groans, no word "business" applies to this story. Many people have tried to help somehow, but you cannot act against the system. The system can only produce a Superjet. "
Leontiev and the fishing fleet
Airplanes are not the only area of interest for Mikhail Leontyev. He also has businesses related to water transport. In April 2013, the journalist co-founded Agro-Marine-LNG, a company that designs ships that run on liquefied natural gas. (The fact that Leontyev has stakes in Optimeng and Agro-Marina-LNG was also reported by the Dozhd TV channel.)The main owner of Agro-Marina is the British company Valser Oil, which, according to the UK commercial register, belongs to two offshore companies registered in the Marshall Islands: Pintox Systems Limited and Syten Group Limited. The directors and owners of these companies were not disclosed. The New Zealand Department of Justice alone has 25 registered companies incorporated by Pintox and Syten; some have been featured in scandals involving money laundering through Moldovan banks.
In April 2017, Valser Oil published a notice that Valery Suraev, an Austrian citizen who was born in Russia in 1960, was included in the list of persons influencing the company's activities. This is a person known in the shipbuilding market: in the 2000s, Suraev headed the department of the fishing fleet, ports and ship repair in the Federal Agency for Fishery. During the audit of the department in 2010, the Accounts Chamber revealed fraud around a billion rubles, which were received in 2005 for the construction of research ships in the Far East. One of the contracts was won by the Scientific and Production Center for Industrial Fishing, Exploration and Monitoring of Marine Bioresources (SPC), registered in Yaroslavl.
“According to the documents, the research ship was built, Suraev signed the acceptance certificate, after which more than 283 million rubles were transferred to the NPC accounts,” sources in the Ministry of Internal Affairs told Izvestia. “Then this money disappeared into the accounts of one-day firms.” During the audit of the Accounts Chamber, it turned out that the skeleton of the ship remained standing on the slipway of the plant in Khabarovsk, among debris and scrap metal. Three more unfinished ships within the framework of the same project never left the stocks of the plant in the Kirov region.
Law enforcement agencies suspected that the real owner of the NPC - Valery Suraev... After the start of the inspection of the Federal Agency for Fishery, he resigned from the civil service and headed this Yaroslavl company. In 2011, as Rosbalt reported, Suraev received a residence permit in Estonia; a year later, a criminal case was opened against him on suspicion of fraud, and the former official was signed not to leave. The Interior Ministry did not respond to Meduza's inquiry about the progress of the investigation.
In 2013, NPC was declared bankrupt - this happened at the suit of the Marine-Invest company, which was owned by Valser Oil, which later established Agro-Marine-LNG. Agro-Marine bought out most of the NPC's property for a million rubles; in addition, the company fully owns the Khabarovsk shipyard.
Mikhail Leontyev knew Valery Suraev long before these events. In the early 2000s, he devoted an entire issue of his author's program on Channel One to the problems of the fishing fleet - and published several of Suraev's columns on these problems in the journal "However".
“He came to me [as a journalist] with [fishing] problems and impressed me. I had ten programs on this topic, - Leontyev recalls. "Suraev and I did a very serious thing together - if we now have some kind of fishing and some prospects for creating Russian vessels in Russia, then the country owes this to Valera Suraev, whom I helped a little."
Another old acquaintance of Leontyev is the general director of Agro-Marine-LNG - this is Vladimir Koloskov, the former first deputy general director of the Rodionov Publishing House, who published the Krestyanka and FHM magazines, which were closed in 2015. Leontyev also worked in the same publishing house - in the late 2000s he headed the magazine "Profile" for two years.
The first three years after the creation of Agro-Marine-LNG did not show itself in any way. At the end of 2016, the company won two tenders from the Krylov State Scientific Center for the development and modernization of fishing vessels using liquefied natural gas. Both contracts were concluded according to the procedure "Purchase from a single supplier" - since their conclusion, according to the documentation, was necessary to prevent accidents and other emergencies of "force majeure".
It took Agro-Marine-LNG only a week to develop projects for two ships - having signed a state contract on November 25, the company handed over the finished project to the customer on December 2. Kommersant explained that such a rush was explained simply: the financing of the work was carried out according to the federal target program "Development of civilian marine technology for 2009-2016" and officials could not postpone the deadline for accepting finished work for the next year. As it turned out a little later, the vessels under the Agro-Marina project will be built on the basis of the hulls of those ships that were not completed by Valery Suraev's companies.
According to a source familiar with the company's activities, Agro-Marine-LNG planned to take part in the construction of ice-class LNG carriers - they are needed to transport liquefied gas along the Northern Sea Route, which Novatek produces in Yamal at the expense of received from the National Wealth Fund.
You need about a dozen gas carriers. The first of them (it was named "Christophe de Margery" in honor of the head of Total, who died in a plane crash in Vnukovo), arrived in Yamal at the end of March 2017 from South Korea - however, it is planned that further gas carriers will be built in Russia, at the Far East shipyard "Zvezda ". This shipyard belongs to Gazprombank and Rosneft, whose press secretary is Mikhail Leontyev. Leontyev himself told Meduza that "there was a project with gas carriers, but I am not in the subject."
Leontyev asserts that "I have never received even a single kopeck from these [companies] in my life." “If someone signed me up as a founder for some purpose, God be their judge. I roughly remember what it was about, but I don’t even remember the names of these companies, ”he said. - How many people have I tried to help? I've tried to help a friend make a film. Every person in life has an attempt to help someone, if he is not a complete bastard. "
[RBC IA, 05/10/2017, "Mikhail Leontyev turned out to be the owner of a stake in technology companies": In an interview with RBC, a Rosneft spokesman called Meduza's publication "about nothing." “There is nothing, there was nothing and, unfortunately, nothing came of it. Zero rubles, zero kopecks, zero result. Zero in total. And this is a pity. I would like there to be something there, ”he said.
According to Leontyev, "all the stupid hints" about his financial interests in the companies mentioned in the article are groundless. “Yes, everything I got from this, I would personally transfer to Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky. Because it is a lot of hemorrhoids, ”he said.
He noted that the activity of the company "Optimyenga-777" continues. “People are working, doing something. Serezha Peigin (owns 27.5% of the company - RBC) is an applied mathematician of a very high world level. He did this in different countries, he really wanted to do it here. They do it really well, ”he said.
“As for the fish, you can see how much I wrote about the keel quotas. A certain amount of time has been spent. Now, by the way, we can say that there is a result, because keel quotas exist. How does this relate to a particular business? None, ”added Leontyev. - Box K.ru] Original of this material
© SDGs, 22.01.2017, Photo: East News, Illustrations: SDGs
Mikhail Leontyev owes 233.5 million rubles to Investbank depositors
Sponsorship of 170 million rubles of Rosneft did not correct the situation with the debt of the magazine "However"
Anastasia GorshkovaAs it became known to the Investigation Management Center (LRC), the publishing group Press Code, which published the magazine "However" by Mikhail Leontyev, owes the depositors of the bankrupt Investbank 233.5 million rubles. There are no signs that this money has been returned: the bailiffs cannot find the publisher even to collect tax arrears. Earlier, the LRC learned that in May 2015, Rosneft allocated 170 million rubles to support its vice president's publication, which is experiencing problems, after which the magazine was closed.
The investor of Leontyev's media startup was Converse Group father and son Antonov... The expenses for the first year of the project, according to Leontyev, should have amounted to up to $ 4 million. “We want to turn this project into a commercially successful publication, and we have the opportunity to ride out the difficult times,” Leontyev said at a press conference dedicated to the launch of the weekly However "in the crisis year 2009. He also stressed that the investor "insisted on financing the project", even despite Leontyev's warnings about the difficulties with advertising and return on investment.
The money was allocated by credit lines of Investbank Antonov Jr. from October 2009 to November 2010. Since December, funding for the magazine has ceased, and at the beginning of 2011 Vladimir Antonov sold his shares in the bank to his top managers. Apparently, the new shareholders were embarrassed by the media asset, but it was possible to agree: the bank received 15% of the publishing house (the share of Channel One), and the loans were guaranteed by Snoras-real estate LLC, 50% of which at that time belonged to Antonov's business partner - the deputy chairman of the board of Academkhimbank Viktor Yampolsky. By 2013, the magazine was published once every two months.
According to SPARK, the shareholders of Press Code Publishing Group LLC are Mikhail Leontyev (15%), Ekaterina Sedova (15%), Investbank (15%) and Dukelevel Holdings Limited registered in Cyprus (55%). In 2009 Leontyev told Kommersant that the majority shareholder is the main investor in the project.
And then, as usual, the Central Bank appeared in history. On December 3, 2013, he revoked the license from Investbank due to the unsatisfactory quality of assets. At that time, the bank was ranked 80th among the largest banks in Russia with an asset valuation of 75.6 billion rubles. It soon became clear that 44 billion rubles would not be enough for the bank to settle accounts with creditors. This is a record size of the hole at that time, comparable only to the bankrupt Mezhprombank of Sergei Pugachev. Investbank was declared bankrupt on March 4, 2014. The Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) started searching for assets and collecting accounts receivable. As of the summer of 2016, the DIA managed to return only 4.1 billion rubles out of 40 to depositors; the bank's total debt to creditors is 60.2 billion rubles.
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| Decision on declaring Ivestbank bankrupt
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And this is where the fun begins. The decision came into force on December 30, 2015, but there are no signs that the money was returned to Investbank. An important detail - representatives of "Press Code" were not present at the hearings. According to SPARK, the publishing house has not reported to the tax office for more than a year. And according to the bailiffs database, enforcement proceedings started in August and November 2016 to collect tax debts from Press Code were soon terminated: it is impossible to establish the whereabouts of the debtor, his property or obtain information about the money in the accounts (Art. 1 clause 3 of the Federal Law "On Enforcement Proceedings").
Mikhail Leontyev is a Russian journalist and publicist, the permanent host of the TV program "However". Today he conducts the author's program "Main Theme" on the radio "Komsomolskaya Pravda", holds the position of press secretary and vice-president of the corporation "Rosneft". He is known for his harsh statements towards colleagues, as well as politicians, including other states.
Childhood and youth
Mikhail Vladimirovich Leontiev was born into an intelligent family on October 12, 1958. Mira Moiseevna, the mother of the future journalist, worked as a teacher at the Moscow Institute. Plekhanov, father Vladimir Yakovlevich was an aircraft designer. By nationality, the newborn turned out to be half Jewish, half Russian.
From childhood, Mikhail Leontyev had a passion for literature - the boy read "drunkenly", he especially liked historical stories and novels. At the age of 5, the parents wanted to enroll the child in figure skating, but he refused. In adolescence, the boy passionately argued with his grandmother, proving to her, an inveterate communist, the shortcomings of Soviet policy. In high school, Mikhail secretly read magazines that were banned in those years.
Journalist Mikhail Leontyev at the presentation of the book "Time to betray" / Dmitry Rozhkov, Wikipedia
After school, the guy entered the Faculty of Economics at the Plekhanov Institute and successfully defended his diploma in 1979. In his youth, the future journalist had to earn money as a loader.
After university, Mikhail Leontyev got a job at a research institute, trying to realize himself in the economy. Patience was enough for several years. In 1985, Mikhail resigned from the Research Institute, from that moment on, life became brighter. The young scientist mastered the carpentry trade, was an ordinary worker at the Literary Institute and a watchman at the dacha. Leontyev also earned his living by tutoring.
Journalism
The biography of Mikhail Vladimirovich is closely related to journalism. In 1987, Leontyev was seriously interested in sociology - Mikhail's first analytical articles were devoted to this topic. After another 2 years, the man devoted himself entirely to journalism. At first he worked as a political correspondent for the Kommersant publication, then headed a department in Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
The Investigation Management Center (LRC) of the public organization "Open Russia" discovered that the current press secretary of the state corporation "Rosneft" Mikhail Leontyev in May 2015 received from this company "a sponsorship contribution to the publication of the magazine" However "in the amount of 170 million rubles in exchange for some “information and advertising services.” The LRC found this information on the public procurement website.
At the same time, the execution of the contract began four months before it was signed, and was supposed to end on January 31, 2016. However, the last issue of the aforementioned magazine was published in June 2015, according to the SDGs page on the VKontakte social network.
The founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, Alexei Navalny, has already drawn attention to the investigation. The oppositionist wrote in his blog that he, as a shareholder of Rosneft, will write a request to the company's management demanding to provide him with all the documents related to financing the production and distribution of the magazine However.
Issue of the weekly "However" Leontyev launched in 2009, being the host of the TV show of the same name on Channel One. By 2013, the magazine was published once every two months, and then the issue was discontinued.
The founder of the magazine was the Press Code publishing group, but the aforementioned agreement on sponsorship was signed by Rosneft with OOO Publishing Group However. Until 2012, 99% of this OOO belonged to Leontiev, then the Institute for Social and Economic Policy Research "(ISEPS), writes the SDGs.
ISEPS, recall, was created in May 2011 immediately after the formation of the pro-Putin "All-Russian Popular Front" (ONF) and developed the electoral program of "United Russia" for the elections to the State Duma in the same year. In May 2012, the head of ISEPI, Nikolai Fedorov, received the post of Minister of Agriculture, after which the Institute was headed by Dmitry Badovsky. According to open sources, in 2013 ISEPS directly or indirectly owned the magazine "However", the Kontr TV channel, the network editions "Vzglyad" and "Dni.ru".
Since September 2016, 100% of the "However" group turned out to be owned by its permanent general director Larisa Leonova, ex-general director of Press Code, writes the SDG. The staff of the center called Leontyev, but his assistant answered instead. Upon learning that the callers are interested in the fate of Rosneft's millions spent on the magazine However, after a long pause, she offered to "call back, maybe tomorrow," the publication says.
"Only the press secretary of a state-owned company that squandered 170 million rubles for his magazine" for intellectuals "can send a journalist in the ass,” the LRC ironically comments, recalling the recent story with Leontyev’s answer to Dozhd’s journalists when asked about the “flashing light” on the president’s car. " Rosneft "Igor Sechin.
Since January 2014, Leontyev has been an advisor to Sechin in the rank of vice president for PR and is the press secretary of Rosneft. The Open Russia organization was founded by the ex-head of Yukos oil company Mikhail Khodorkovsky. There is a version in the Western press that it was Sechin who organized the arrest of Khodorkovsky in order to remove him from the political arena and seize Yukos's assets, which eventually passed to Rosneft.
The press secretary "" quite specifically reacted to the question of journalists of the TV channel "Dozhd" on what grounds the head of the company travels in a car with a special signal - the so-called flashing light. "Please go to the ass. Please accept the assurances of our unwavering respect," said Leontyev.
According to the newspaper, the Rosneft company has no right to use cars with flashing lights. The list of services that have such privileges is spelled out in the presidential decree "On streamlining the use of special signals", which he signed in May 2012. According to the text of the document, for example, the government is entitled to 32 flashing lights, the presidential administration - 22, the FSB - 207. There are no Rosneft and other state-owned companies in the decree.
At the same time, the TV channel claims, Sechin still uses a flashing light. Several sources told the media about this, including one federal official. At the end of last year, a photograph of his car with a special signal appeared on the Internet: Life journalist Anastasia Kashevarova published on her Instagram a frame with a Mercedes against the background of the Kremlin wall. According to Kashevarova, Sechin himself got behind the wheel of this car, leaving the Kremlin.
At the same time, Igor Sechin may be able to move around without traffic jams - it will not be illegal if another department provides him with a car, for example, the Federal Security Service. Such decisions are not formalized by public decrees, said one of the interlocutors. However, the FSO told the channel that they had nothing to do with this story.
Rosneft spokesman Mikhail Leontyev declined to comment on the Dozhd TV channel on the information that appeared in social networks that the head of Rosneft Igor Sechin still uses a car with a flashing light, although he is not allowed by law.
"Please go to the ass. Please accept the assurances of our unwavering respect," - answered the question of Dozhd why Sechin received a flashing light, Rosneft press secretary Mikhail Leontyev. Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov did not answer the question whether Vladimir Putin provided a special signal to the head of the state company.Until 2012, Sechin moved in a car with a special signal as Deputy Prime Minister. Dozhd failed to find any presidential decree that would have given the head of Rosneft the right to use a flashing light. All departments whose employees can use the flashing light are listed in the presidential decree "On streamlining the use of special signals", which he signed in May 2012. According to the text of the document, for example, the government is entitled to 32 flashing lights, the presidential administration - 22, the FSB - 207. There are no Rosneft and other state-owned companies in the decree.
Sechin can drive a car that was not provided by his company, but by a third-party agency that has the right to flashers, the Federal Security Service, two federal officials told Dozhd. Such decisions are not formalized by public decrees, said one of the interlocutors. “We have nothing to do with this,” the FSO press service told Dozhd and addressed all questions to Rosneft.
"Rain"
Life journalist Anastasia Kashevarova drew attention to the fact that Sechin was driving a car with a special signal. According to her, "Sechin left the Kremlin himself at the wheel."
Traditionally, FSO cars are equipped with numbers with the EKX series, a federal official notes. The alleged car of the head of Rosneft has just such a series. The Mercedes number published by Kashevarova is Е939КХ77.The Kremlin correspondent of "Life" Alexander Yunashev told "Rain" that he also saw Sechin getting into a car with this number on several occasions. Moreover, according to him, an escort car drives behind the head of Rosneft. “Once he got behind the wheel himself, and as soon as he drove off a little, an escort car drove up behind him, if I’m not mistaken, a dark blue Volkswagen. But Sechin usually sits in the back seat of his car, and unlike all officials, he sits down not on the right, but on the left, that is, behind the driver. This is the safest place. I once asked him why he does this. He replied that this is a habit from his past work, "says the journalist.
A senior federal official claims the intelligence services had information that Sechin's life was in danger following the Yukos affair. He needs protection and escort to protect himself from the revenge of the former shareholders of the oil company, follows from the words of the interlocutor of "Dozhd". Because of this, according to his version, the flasher<...>
The heads of all other state-owned companies and corporations do not use flashing lights, it follows from the answers of their press services to Dozhd's questions. The press secretary of the head of "Gazprom" Alexei Miller said that he used a special signal before the presidential decree in 2012, but after that he lost his privilege. "When the decree was issued, we obeyed," - explained the interlocutor of Rain. The press services of Transneft, Sberbank, Russian Railways and Rostec also assured Dozhd that their managers and employees do not drive cars with flashing lights.
"Rain"
January 18, 16:30 Leontyev told BBC journalists that Sechin has the right to a car with a flashing light as a "state official of a certain level."
"By the way, Sechin is the executive secretary of the presidential commission on the fuel and energy complex (the fuel and energy complex - Sechin oversaw it when he was deputy prime minister in Putin's government). That is, at least he is a state official of a certain level who has the right to a flashing light and a special car," - Leontyev replied to the BBC's question whether the Dozhd TV channel's information that Sechin uses a car with a special signal is true.To a direct question whether Sechin has a flashing light, Leontyev refused to answer.
Leontyev reacted emotionally to the call from the BBC correspondent. “What are you asking? Why, why the hell? BBC ": guys, you really are fucking. Well, enough of g **** - then pick up. [...] You know what, you go farther, I don't want to answer your question," said Leontyev and threw tube.